In the Footsteps of the Etruscans : Changing Landscapes around Tuscania from Prehistory to Modernity

Explores the 7500-year history of the area around Tuscania, a small town near Rome, using the results of an extended archaeological investigation. Demonstrates the power of this approach to write long-term histories that complement and enrich historical and geographical studies.

In the Footsteps of the Etruscans describes the archaeology of the countryside within a ten km radius of the small town of Tuscania near Rome, throwing light on the unrecorded lives of the generations of farmers and shepherds who have lived there. What was the character of prehistoric settlement prior to Etruscan urbanization? How did urbanization shape the lives of the 'ordinary Etruscans' working the land, hardly ever addressed in Etruscan archaeology? What was the impact on these people of being absorbed into the expanding Roman empire and its globalised economic structures? How did the empire's collapse and the subsequent emergence of the nucleated medieval village affect Tuscania's rural population? The project's 7500-year 'archaeological history', from the first farmers to those grappling with globalisation today, contributes eloquently to our understanding of how Mediterranean peoples have constantly shaped their landscape, and been shaped by it.